What do you want your students to understand today in this lesson? It was a simple enough question. Wasn’t it? And yet, having asked it many times to many teachers, I realized that it wasn’t simple at all. It was daunting. It was humbling. It produced deer-in-the-headlights’ responses.

Like most teachers, I was clear on the types of skills that I was expected to teach; I understood what my students should be able to do. But to understand? Now, this was the million dollar question.

Before educational specialists and publishers coined the term learning targets (statements designed to clarify daily learning), I was using them to guide my lesson planning because my teaching mentors had used them. In the 1970s, my best teachers were clear about what they expected their students to know and to do. They didn’t post these targets on the board (chalk, not white board). They didn’t have fancy wall charts with special boxes to showcase them. But each day, they taught purposefully with these targets in mind. Early on, I saw the difference that such clear-headed lesson design made in my own learning. And I wanted to emulate this in my own classrooms.

Years later, as I attempted to help other teachers identify both what they wanted their students to know and to do, I became painfully aware that I was asking many to enter foreign territory. What do you mean “to know”? I want them to answer the questions at the end of the chapter. or I want them to takes notes today. Sadly, our skill-driven era had blinded many to the reality that doing alone was not enough.

Sadder still was the reality that teachers and administrators were eagerly checking off skills on lists created to ensure that they were meeting state and/or federal regulations. Identifying main idea? Check. Citing evidence? Check. With horror, I witnessed how such check-lists gave educators the false assurance that all was well.

As a consultant, I once visited with a group of teachers who were explaining how they measured their students’ mastery of the skills identified in our state standards. I asked how they determined proficiency in students who cited evidence to support a main idea, one of many Iowa educational standards. They explained that if their students cited evidence from a text, they met this standard. I smiled politely. Here was living proof that the check-list was alive and well. It didn’t seem to matter if their students cited the wrong or weak evidence. They just had to cite something, and they were proficient. These students didn’t need to deeply understand the idea they were supporting or that there were passages in the text that supported it much better than others. They didn’t need to know this because their teachers measured success by doing rather than by knowing.

In all good conscience, I can’t really condemn such efforts, for I know that they were well-intended, at best, and compliant, at least. Most teachers in the educational trenches are simply good foot soldiers. Even if they are confused or disgusted by what initiatives and guidelines come their way, in the end, they dutifully give their best.

I can, however, condemn those who all too willingly push the educational pendulum from one side to the other, leaving time-tested practices and philosophies in their wake. These are the folk who literally throw the baby out with the bathwater. Skills are in, everything else is out. Forget what you learned professionally last year–or ever! If you care about your students, you will change!

Certainly, change can be necessary and good. But change for the sake of change hurts us all. I have lived too long in the educational world not to notice that about every 7-8 years, text book companies roll out new editions. Which schools are persuaded to buy because they are new and different, because they are much better than the previous editions, because they are more closely aligned with current guidelines and include the latest educational research, etc. In this world, change is often about money and little more. And companies who have embraced the skills’ market are cashing in.

The majority of the professional work I’ve done in the past 10 years is to help teachers create concept-based units that intentionally marry skills with ideas. In a nutshell, I’m in the forest and the trees business these days. When teachers are lost in the undergrowth of discrete skills, I throw them lifelines. Together, we work to identify the ideas worth learning. Then, and only then, do we work to achieve this end by choosing the best and most relevant skills. And we do all of this in hopes that students will be able to see the forest for the trees, that they will come to see how skills are a means to an end: to learn the kinds of ideas that have lived–and continue to live–beyond a single lesson, text, or unit.

This is the legacy I hope to have left for my students: that they will remember the big, enduring ideas from the best thinkers. Like those from Nathaniel Hawthorne, who taught me that one’s intellect must always be balanced with one’s heart. Or from Ernest Hemingway who helped me see the heroism in grace under pressure. I want them to remember lessons learned from history rather than to recall specific dates and names of battles. I want them to have drawn well-considered conclusions after they have considered opposing views rather than to proudly admit they’ve mastered a particular skill.

And this is the legacy that I hope I can help other teachers leave to their students. Undoubtedly the educational pendulum will swing again for the next generation of students. But for this generation, we have an obligation to do much more than teach skills.

Martial artist Bruce Lee claims that training is one of the most neglected phases of athletics. Too much time is given to the development of skill and too little to the development of the individual . . . We would do well to take these words to heart in our schools, as well. When we spend too much time on developing skills, we have too little, if any, time to spend on developing individuals, which has always required a strong foundation of ideas.

And so, I’ll continue my forest and trees work. It’s a good fight, perhaps one of the only fights worth fighting these days, and I’m in it for the long haul.

for all teachers, past, present, and future

The book itself–a teacher’s manual that accompanies a middle school reading series–weighed more than the collective weight of all of the paperback novels I read during my undergraduate and graduate English work. Too large for my computer bag, I had packed it under one arm and walked, lop-sided to my car. At home now, I cracked the crisp spine (no easy task itself) and opened it to survey the contents.

The heft alone could not have prepared me for the real weight before me. Each page was gleefully packed with as many notes, strategies, and general teacher-stuff as was logistically possible. I say gleefully because I can just imagine the contributors and editors pouring over each page spread, saying There’s space here for one more assessment recommendation! And look–if we edit this differentiation suggestion, we could add a multiple-intelligence note here! If you’re tempted to laugh at this point, most teachers who are required to use these manuals and texts won’t join you.

Educational, like political, pendulums swing wide. When an idea or practice falls out of favor, the pendulum swoops decisively to the other side. And those along for the ride are often directed not to look back. I remember visiting with a teacher during the whole language era. Her principal had sent a directive to box up all of the current reading texts and set them aside for the janitor, who would take them away. To the district storage unit? To the burn barrel? She said that she didn’t know. With fire in her eyes, though, she turned to me and whispered, But I hid one copy in the back of my file cabinet! Phonics out, whole language in. The violent swing of the reading pendulum left desperate teachers conspiring to save resources that had fueled the last decades of their professional lives.

When No Child Left Behind marched upon the educational scene, it presented lofty, but unrealistic, expectations that no child would be left behind their peers and below the standards by which we measure what is grade-level proficiency. Gone were the warm, fuzzy days of inventive spelling and if you think it, it must be so. There were new sheriffs in town, and they rode in on the backs of common assessments, wielding measuring sticks that were more formidable than any six-shooter.

I admit that the aims of NCLB were commendable. As a nation, we had become educationally flabby, resting on the laurels of past eras while the rest of the world–developed and developing–caught up. This law was a wake-up call that caught many schools unprepared. And just as schools were reeling in their attempts to meet new federal guidelines, along came the Common Core State Standards in 2010, the work of the National Governors Association for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers. These standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics identified grade-level skills and practices. Many states adopted these or modified forms of these standards, and assessment companies rushed to create new tests that aligned to them.

Again, I applauded–and continue to applaud–these standards’ design and intent. I have used them, have helped others use them, and still believe that for many (not all) students, they define the right work. They were never intended, however, to be the curriculum. Instead, they were intended to provide students with the skills and practices to learn a particular curriculum. The standards do not dictate what content I must teach or even how to teach it. They do identify the types of language and mathematical skills that students should use as a means of learning the essential ideas in a lesson or unit of study. That is, the standards were not intended to be ends in themselves, but rather a means to these ends.

But in an attempt to sell more books and to keep up with the times, text book companies have often been short-sighted. They have packed their texts with skill work, so much so that even for a veteran teacher like me, it’s difficult–if not downright impossible–to see the forest for the trees. Visiting a high school classroom, I once asked a student what she was learning in her lesson that day. She responded, We’re interpreting symbolism.

In another classroom, I asked the same question. A student pointed to his paper and said: We’re filling out this graphic organizer. When I followed up by conceding that I could see what they were doing but that I was interested in what they were learning (what they were to understand that day), I got sheepish looks and shoulder shrugs. They were clear on the means they were using but had absolutely no idea as to what end. They could name the skills but not the ideas they were to uncover.

So when I opened the hulking teacher’s manual I was given as a resource for my consulting work, I immediately felt sick, dizzied with all the text and text-boxes before me. I didn’t know where to look first. I couldn’t determine what was a priority. Or was everything a priority? Was I supposed to do it all in one lesson? Was this humanly possible, even if I put my nose to the grindstone?

When I could finally focus, I saw that each page was peppered with skill work. In this paragraph, students should draw this inference, while in this section, they should make predictions. Later, they should be able to identify point of view, and even later, interpret metaphor. After doing all these things, what were they supposed to understand about this short story? Sadly, there were no notes about this. Had these notes been edited out under the weight of so many skills or simply forgotten in this new age of skills?

Like most, I learn equations to solve problems, and I learn how to make inferences to uncover what authors want me to understand. Solving quadratic equations and making inferences are two of many, many tools in my learning tool belt. The tool is not the thing, though; what I create with it is the thing. But how are today’s students supposed to see that their work is not just to amass more tools? And how are teachers today supposed to help their students understand that it’s not either skills or ideas, but both? 

I once asked my father, an English professor, why he decided to become a literature teacher. He said this: Because teaching the greatest ideas from the greatest writers is the most moral thing I could ever do. My father taught me how to read closely and write critically so that I could understand, reflect upon, and challenge great ideas from great writers. He didn’t teach thesis writing in isolation; he taught it in the context of understanding great works. In his classrooms and around our supper table, I learned the lessons of both/and. From my father and through my own reading and reflection, I have learned how crucial it is to see the forest for the trees.

And so while I value the importance of skill work, I lament its current reality. In many classrooms, students are doing, but they are not understanding. And when legislators, educational specialists, text book companies, and well-meaning but misguided others champion such skill work, those of us who value understanding as well are often dismissed as old school.

World renown cellist, Yo Yo Ma, writes: Mastering music is more than learning technical skills. How right he is–about music and about much more. Learning technical skills is clearly important, but it is not, and never should be, everything. I’ve heard musicians play technically and fail to make me feel and understand a piece of music. And tragically, I’ve heard many students read, perfectly decoding each word, and fail to understand or appreciate what they’re reading. Learning, like mastering music, is so much more than learning technical skills.

I fear that schooling with skills will result in neither the type of students nor citizens we desire. And worse yet, when we put all of our eggs in the skills’ basket, we risk producing an entire generation of students who don’t aspire to more than mastering the skills required for passing grades. An African proverb warns: Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse.  Will our students wish to know? Or will they sleep well enough with their tool belts hanging from their bedposts?

for my mom on her birthday

My Mother's Raincoat

was nothing but a 2-ply, black 
plastic garbage bag
with a single hole punched through
for her head.

And huddled in the McCook High School bleachers,
beside another mother
who, too, had grown into such a poncho,
she watched the Girl's District Trackmeet
below.

It was spring in Nebraska,
and the northwest wind blew in sleet from Wyoming,
pelted the garbage bags
and the cotton sweatsuits of runners
in the infield.

Beneath green sun visors
keeping drizzle from their eyes,
my mother and her friend looked on
and waved.

And standing alone 
at the start of the 440 yard run,
I fumbled to undo the string of my sweatpants.
The lucky beads I always wore around my neck
were not there, and there was nothing
but cold to hold me up.

Until I saw my mother's garbage bag
and remembered that tucked beneath it,
she kept graham crackers and Hershey bars,
chapstick and peppermints.
Underneath all that wind-whipped plastic
were hands that would rub out the cold
and drive me home.

Underneath it all--
and in spite of the sneers from other runners
who laughed long at the sight of two women in bags--
was the mother who, years later, would stand on the front terrace,
curbside, who would wave at me as I drove away
to newer homes.
The mother who would wave until
I turned the corner, and she could see me
no more.

Will she ever know the times I circled the block,
hoping that she hadn't yet gone inside,
remembering hands and cold
and that blessed slant of light 
through her visor?

Shan

The Gleaners, Leon Augustin Lhmermitte

Until recently, the only time I had ever used the word glean was in reference to something I’d taken from a text, film, or conversation. That is, I gleaned such and such information from something or someone. This, of course, is a secondary definition, one that has its roots in an ancient practice of gathering grain or other produce that reapers have left behind. This was a common–even sacred–practice that gave the poor access to the grain fields, vineyards, or orchards after they had been harvested.

The Bible contains explicit references to gleaning, the most notable in the story of Ruth, a poor Moabite woman who asked for permission to glean in the fields of Boaz so that she might help support her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi. The book of Leviticus (23:22) identifies God’s provision for the least of these:

“And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.”

Gleaning has continued to be an essential practice in many rural societies, even today. In his 2015 article, “Gleaning: An Ancient Custom That May Return In The Future,” Ugo Bardi writes that gleaning:

is an extremely smart idea simply because it is so inexpensive. First of all, gleaners didn’t need tools, nor needed special skills. They would simply walk in the fields, equipped with nothing more than their hands and a bag, collecting what they found on the ground. Gleaners didn’t need to be trained in harvesting, nor to be in perfect physical shape. Women could do it, just as older people and youngsters could. Then, it was a totally informal operation, without the costs of bosses, of hierarchies, of organizations.

In her 2000 documentary, The Gleaners and I, French film director, Agnes Varda offers a portrait of contemporary gleaners–both those who glean from the leftovers that the rest of us throw out or ignore and those creative souls, like herself, that make art from what they have gleaned. In a 2001 interview, Andrea Meyer said that gleaning might be a metaphor for so many things, even filmmaking. To which, Varda responded: It is true that filming, especially a documentary, is gleaning. Because you pick what you find; you bend; you go around; you are curious; you try to find out where are things.   

Varda also referred to gleaning as getting things that are abandoned. She explained that she didn’t abandon her earlier works–films and photographs–but rather, she returned to them, a body of work as something I can pick from.

Meyer and Varda may be on to something, for gleaning may certainly be a metaphor for so many things, particularly for returning to words, images, and things that have been set aside or forgotten in hopes of fresh pickings. As a thrift store connoisseur, I can testify to the adage: One man’s trash is another’s treasure. Oh, to explore the land of the misfit toys, clothes, and books! And to think that others have already harvested what they wanted and left these treasures behind!

Artists are exceptional gleaners. The entire world is literally at their fingertips, ripe for the picking. And contemporary artists, in particular, have often turned to the leftovers or the ignored for their subject matter. Andy Warhol gleaned Campbell soup cans and Heinz Tomato Ketchup boxes as the perfect subjects for his paintings. Poets often find poems in the most unlikely places: obituaries, advertisements, news stories. Choreographers, novelists, playwrights, and filmmakers glean stories from people and places that the world has largely ignored or forgotten.

Take, for example, a novel I recently read. Steven Heighton’s novel, afterlands, is a fictional account of the 1871 Polaris expedition which was intended to be the first trip to the North Pole. Who knew that Charles Francis Hall and 19 members of his expedition would be separated from their ship and have to survive for 6 months on an ice floe? Reading the account of their desperate attempts to survive on a chunk of ice that continued to shift and break was excruciating–not to mention the fact that there is not much food to be harvested on ice! Or who knew that, months later, Captain Hall would accuse these members of poisoning him and that would be a naval investigation into his death? I had never heard of this expedition or these people in any history class, and if it weren’t for the artful and historical gleaning of Steven Heighton, I would have died without knowing that if you are ever stranded on an ice floe, it’s best if you are stranded with a few Inuits who have some mad seal-hunting skills.

Lately, I have turned to some fruitful gleaning. Having inherited many of my father’s notebooks and books, I have been foraging through the margins, the end sheets, the single pieces of paper folded and stuck into places that may–or may not–have any significance. I have looked at entries my father had written and crossed out. Like Varda, I am returning to them as a body of work one might pick from. And the pickings have been far greater than I could have imagined.

From a small blue pocket notebook he carried when he walked the streets of Kearney, Nebraska:

“I am so slow in learning,” she said. Why did I praise her for that?

The author of a book is a voice with a new body.

Think of E.T.’s glowing finger and its magical touch. It is nothing compared to the touchstone that you get from the best reading.

From a brown, tooled leather journal:

When I wrote
     I walked on.
When I walked on
     went farther.
And, here, in this 
     worn pocket
is the book
     of my returns.

I live on inclinations
heart's knowings
two good twins.   
 

From margin notes following the poem, “How I Met My Muse” in An Oregon Message, Poems by William Stafford:

–so uncommonly common

Following Stafford’s poem, “Waiting Sometimes”:

This is Stafford at his best.
--"Hands" said, "Your attention, I need it"--and Stafford gives it
--Would Yeats? Would Heaney?
--Somehow hands would seem beneath Yeats's idea of poetry--not dramatic or noble enough
--Heaney would probably write about a specific person's hands, a bogger's, a turf-cutter's, or a thatcher's--but Stafford writes about generic hands and makes them human
--his style: to humanize the most ordinary things and people

From the end sheet of Selected Poems and Two Plays of William Butler Yeats:

Subjects for possible papers:
--Idea of dying into life--how does Yeats handle this old theme--what dies?
--Is Yeats's great poetry a literature of despair, hope, or neither? Is it a literature of realism? How realistic is it?
--Does Yeats reconcile Art and Life? Is Art greater than life? Is this an aristocratic point of view?
--What, if anything, assuages man's powerful thirst in Yeats's poems?
--Does art for art's sake lead to escapism, then to fatal irrelevance? As a way of life, who wants to follow a golden bird to Byzantium?

As a way of life, who wants to follow a golden bird to Byzantium? The birds of my father’s life were neither golden nor destined for glory in Byzantium. They were homing pigeons, blue bars, reds, and grizzles, all indistinguishable from common barn pigeons to the untrained eye. But if I have learned anything from my father–and from what I have I gleaned from his books and notebooks–it is that the ordinary is so uncommonly common, that it is seldom ordinary if we have but eyes to see and hearts to feel, that to humanize the most ordinary things and people is, perhaps, the most virtuous thing one to which one might aspire.

I have learned that to be slow in learning, a notion so tragically foreign to most classrooms and boardrooms, is to be praised. I have learned that to walk on, and then to walk farther, is often one of the best forms of prayer. And I have learned that inclinations and heart’s knowings are, without a doubt, two good twins.

And if gleaning may be a good metaphor for many things (and I believe it is), I have learned that my life has been filled with so many conversations and experiences during which some of the best stuff was left unharvested, lying in the fields to wither and, perhaps, to be forgotten altogether. Left there, unharvested, this is often the uncommonly common stuff that has the power to transform or, at the very least, to enrich lives.

Gleaning, as Varda claims, is about getting things that have been abandoned, and returning to a body of work, a conversation or experience, just like the hungry return to a field, as something to pick from. As I am looking forward into the new year, I will also look back to things I have abandoned, neglected, and overlooked. In the final line of his poem, “Birches,” Robert Frost writes that “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.” If my initial gleanings from my father are any indication, one could also do worse–much, much worse–than be a gleaner of things.